Month: May 2016

(credit: US Army Africa)

After decades of trying to zap malaria once and for all, researchers are buzzing about a new experimental vaccine against the mosquito-transmitted infection. If results from early trials hold up, the vaccine could one day significantly help slap down malaria’s infectious toll, which hit 214 million documented illnesses and more than 400,000 deaths in 2015 alone.

In a phase I trial—the stage at which scientists test safety and dosage levels in a small number of people—the experimental vaccine spared up to 55 percent of participants from getting sick after they were bitten by malaria-loaded mosquitoes. For some of the test subjects, that protection lasted a year, researchers reported in Nature Medicine.

Those stats may seem like low bars to call a vaccine "promising," but the results actually beat out other vaccine candidates tested so far. Previously, the most well-studied malaria vaccine, called RTS,S, fared even worse in similar tests. It only protected 22 percent of healthy adults subjected to disease-toting mosquitoes, and the protection was tested up to just five months. Nevertheless, RTS,S made it to a phase III trial—the stage at which scientists test efficacy in large numbers of people. In that trial, the vaccine did slightly better, keeping up to 36 percent of kids from getting documented cases of malaria for up to two years. European regulators subsequently approved the use of that vaccine in 2015.

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

SAN FRANCISCO—"I always have to think when I write this out, because I'm not used to writing billions," Oracle lawyer Peter Bicks told a jury here as he wrote out "3,000,000,000" on a large sheet of paper.

"Three billion mobile phones have been activated with Oracle's property on them," he said. There are 100,000 Android phones being activated each hour, he continued. "$42 billion in revenue through all of those activations. Each with our client's property in them. Valuable computer code."

Bicks' verbal assault was the first volley in the second Oracle v. Google trial, a month-long legal showdown that could end with one of the largest civil verdicts in history.

(credit: Joe Shlabotnik)

Accidental fiber cuts caused by construction workers took out telecommunications service for more than 750,000 customers in the New York City area yesterday.

The fiber cuts hit the network of Level 3, an Internet backbone provider, and lasted for hours before being fixed. Problems hit several states: customer reports on DownDetector indicate that outages primarily affected Time Warner Cable (TWC) in New York and Cox Communications in large parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island and small parts of Massachusetts. Level 3's network serves both TWC and Cox.

The most specific outage numbers came from New York. The New York Department of Public Service (NYDPS) issued a statement saying that "more than 750,000 customers in the New York City area were unable to complete telephone calls." Most or all of those customers are apparently Time Warner Cable users. Internet and TV service was also affected.

Nintendo

Pokémon Sun and Moon launch on November 18.

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In a brief trailer released this morning, Nintendo gave eager Pokémon masters some important details on the forthcoming Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon: the games will launch on November 18th; as usual, each game will include a new as-yet-unnamed legendary mascot and new grass-, fire-, and water-type starter Pokémon.

The starters include Popplio, a water-type seal; Litten, a fire-type disinterested-looking cat (so, a cat); and Rowlet, a grass- and flying-type owl with an adorable little leafy bow tie (clearly the best of the three). Pokémon Sun's story will presumably revolve around the big sunny lion on the cover, where Moon will feature a big crescent-shaped bat.

The trailer also showed off snippets of the game's graphics, which are similar to those used in X and Y (they're launching on the same system, after all). The main Pokémon RPGs have always been conservative in the graphics department—Pokémon X and Y were the first in the franchise's then-17-year history to use 3D models for all people and Pokémon both inside and outside of battle. Sun and Moon's setting, the Hawaii-esque Alola region, appears to use larger maps with a greater sense of scale than in past games, and the region is shown off using more diverse and dynamic camera angles. The game's worlds have all been rendered in 3D since Pokémon Diamond and Pearl hit the DS back in 2006, but even X and Y mostly stuck to the top-down camera view the series has used since Red and Blue on the original Game Boy.

Some press reports have referred to this accomplishment as the world's first "perfect" game of Donkey Kong, implying a scoring mark that will never be surpassed. That framing has partly been driven by Copeland himself, who said on Facebook that "this will be my last record score... I don't believe I can put up a game any higher than this." A breathless post by the score-watchers at Donkey Kong Blog calls it "a score about which we could confidently say, even if not definitively, 'this will never be beaten.'"

Yet there's still some reason to believe higher Donkey Kong scores are technically achievable, even if no one in their right mind may be able to do so any time soon.